To the Editor:

There is much misinformation floating around on the Battle of Princeton. We have learned much over the last few years from artifacts and original accounts, much of which is included in John Milner Associates’ Princeton Battlefield Mapping Study on our website. This report was funded under the American Battlefield Protection Program (ABPP) of the National Park Service which vetted and approved the study.

The study represents the most comprehensive study of the battle ever done. Our efforts to save the Counterattack Site are largely based on that report and we are strongly supported in our conclusion that the Battle of Princeton was fought and won on the Counterattack Site by the two premiere historic preservation groups in the country the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Civil War Trust.

In 2011, professor and acclaimed historian David Hackett Fischer wrote in a letter to the National Trust for Historic Preservation to support the nomination of the Counterattack Site to its list of the 11 Most Endangered Historic Sites in the U.S.: “One question of historical fact is disputed by the Institute. Several spokespersons asserted that major fighting in the battle did not occur on the land it wishes to develop. They are mistaken. The climax of the battle was a major assault by Washington’s Continental troops, who broke the British line in very heavy fighting. This event happened primarily on the open field that the Institute proposes to use for a housing project. Five major studies have all reached the same result. Several archaeological digs have turned up more density of artifacts from the battle than in the park itself. This land is as central to the battle of Princeton as the field of Pickett’s Charge is to Gettysburg and as Omaha Beach is to D-Day.“

Esteemed Princeton University Professor Jim McPherson testified before the Princeton Planning Board on the historic significance of the Counterattack Site on December 8, 2011 as follows: “So we’re not talking about something unimportant here. We also agree, as David Fischer does actually say this we agree with the Battlefield Society, that the right wing of the American Counter Attack that won the Battle of Princeton took place on Institute Land, including the buffer zone and part of the land on which the housing is planned.”

There have been some repeated misguided claims that the ”Battle of Princeton was just a series of skirmishes all the way to Nassau Hall, none particularly important. It seems that the Institute and its supporters of the destruction of the counterattack site have subscribed to a publicity campaign based on the “Big Lie” theory that if you repeat a lie often enough people will believe it is true.

Enough is enough. It is time to own up to the fact that the IAS is intent on destroying the heart of one of the most important sites in American history.

Jerald P. Hurwitz

President, Princeton Battlefield Society

Editor’s Note: The 2011 statements by Mr. McPherson and Mr. Fischer were made prior to a compromise proposal that the Battlefield Society did not find acceptable.